Teaching Nano-Thermodynamics: Gibbs Energy of Single-Component Nanoparticles

Abstract

Much attention has been paid to thermodynamic modeling of nanosystems. A common approach consists in addition of a surface/interface term to the Gibbs energy of bulk materials and application of general conditions of equilibrium. Some discrepancy still remains dealing with the expression for surface contribution to molar Gibbs energy and chemical potential of components. It is shown, that due to the nonextensive nature of the surface area, these contributions are different for molar and partial molar quantities. The consistent expressions for the molar Gibbs energy and chemical potential of a single-component spherical nanoparticle are put forward along with the simple derivation of the Kelvin and Gibbs-Thomson equations.